It Seems Like A Simple Adjustment

Joe Doakes from Como Park writes:

We must knock down a warehouse to build a ballpark for the St. Paul Saints and also give $200,000 to artists to decorate the empty Union Station. Because it’s too expensive not to.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could afford to let some developer convert the warehouse into condo lofts, leave the Saints in their existing ballpark and allow travelers to enjoy the classic beauty of the station as-is? I’d be willing to spring for that. How much would that cost?

Joe Doakes

To the Minnesota bureaucrat, spending itself is both beautiful and efficient.  Or something.

7 thoughts on “It Seems Like A Simple Adjustment

  1. I love going to Saints games, and have been going since their inception. I will not be going to the new ballpark. Not while there is even one cub scout troop that still needs a new stadium!

  2. I would wonder whether many artists might like to make their work public by offering it for free at Union Station as well, if the place needs art. And a new stadium for the Saints?

    OK, the place is all of 31 years old, which is 68 years younger than Wrigley Field, 70 years younger than Fenway Park, 23 years younger than Dodger Stadium, 17 years younger than the Astrodome……tell the Saints to get with the program and figure out how to update the stadium they’ve got.

    For that matter, renovations of Met Field and Memorial Stadium in the early 1980s could have saved the state a lot of the money used to build the RollerDome, Target Field, the Mall of America, TCF Stadium, the new home for the Queens, Block E, and the Hiawatha Line. It’s an amount equivalent to Mr. Dayton’s proposed tax hikes, I think.

  3. Listen boys; the Twin Cities are a lost cause…we all know it. Mocking the wasteful profligacy of leftist bureaucracies like the Ramsey County Regional Rail Authority won’t change a thing; they just don’t care. They won; they took your money. It’s how these things work, just ask Cy Thao.

    So while I don’t think you should stop mocking them, I do think it’s time to start cashing in.

    Now those “emerging artists” will need lots of raw materials to create their “art”. They got $10k to spend, so why not cruise on down there with buckets of crap and urine, used condoms, broken incandescent light bulbs, rusted bicycle rims, feather boas & etc, and charge the premium price such prime items command?

  4. Even at the high cost, I have been a somewhat supportor of the St Paul Union restoration. But its things like this…spending $200,000 on “art”. Why? The station looks good as it is.

    Its like the light rail projects. The affirmative action rules have raised the costs by several millions of dollars.

  5. Point 1: Things they used to teach you in business school: “The amount you sell less your cost equals your profit”. Things they now teach you in business school- “If you don’t ask/demand/threaten/cajole government into helping you reduce your costs, you should be fired”. Can’t blame the Saints/Mayo/Vikings/etc. for working under the new business model for large or at least publicly visible companies – Socialize your costs/risks, privatize the gains, pay some accountant to hide whatever gains you have so you don’t pay any taxes”.
    Point 2: With regard to the art at Union Station – we have a restaurant near us that features art or at least some representation of it on their walls. At the bottom of each piece, there is a price with contact name and phone number so you can buy the piece if you like it so much. The restaurant gets to cover up the blank wall and some artist gets to exhibit their ‘art’ and maybe sell it. Why not turn Union Station into a consignment space for these ‘artists’? Oh yeah, point 1.

  6. You are correct, Seflores! That would make too much sense and confuse the pro government orcs.

  7. Seflores: You’re suggesting fiscal sanity to a city going into the swirling vortex of inevitable bankruptcy. You might as well suggest Michael Moore refuse the dessert menu.

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